Tebow Before There Was Tebow

Former Dolphin Jim Jensen Laid the Groundwork for the Jets' Multi-Purpose QB

ENLARGE

Jim Jensen, left, had many roles during his 11 years with the Dolphins—including playing quarterback, receiver and on special teams.
NFL Photos/Associated Press

By

Mike Sielski

Sept. 21, 2012 7:51 p.m. ET

FLORHAM PARK, N.J.—As soon as he learned the Jets had traded for Tim Tebow, Jim Jensen let his mind take him back to his playing days with the Miami Dolphins, to an old-time approach to football now given new promise and possibility.

Jensen spent 11 years in the NFL, all of them with the Dolphins, all of them in a role that serves as a template for the multidimensional manner in which the Jets will use Tebow this season. In an idea born of the fertile football minds of Don Shula and a special-teams guru named Mike Westhoff, Jensen became perhaps the most versatile player in NFL history; he retired in 1992 after playing no fewer than six positions in his career.

Twenty years later, Westhoff is in his final season as the Jets' special-teams coach, and regardless of where Tebow may line up this season—at quarterback, on special teams, at tight end, at fullback—he will be standing in Jensen's footprints.

"I knew when they got Tebow that Mike was just licking his chops," said Jensen, whose old team will host the Jets on Sunday. "He'd say, 'Oh, yeah. I can run the fake punts and do all kinds of different things with him.'"

Before becoming a Jet, Tebow had been only a quarterback in college and the NFL, sometimes in a conventional offense, but usually in a read-option set that accentuated his running ability. Yet already this season he has appeared 11 times as a Wildcat quarterback and once as a slot receiver. And from the moment the Jets acquired Tebow in March, Westhoff was open about his belief that Tebow could play special teams, even though he had never done so at any level of football.

Westhoff has since used Tebow in two ways: as the up back in punt formations—where he's a threat to carry out a fake—and as a member of the hands team when the Buffalo Bills attempted an onside kick two weeks ago. As it turned out, Tebow recovered the kick. In neither assignment, though, is Tebow doing anything that Jensen didn't do for Westhoff over the pair's seven seasons together in Miami.

In fact, according to Westhoff, Tebow lines up in the same spots on the field and relies on the same terminology that Jensen did. As the Dolphins' up back, for instance, Jensen did not necessarily have the authority to call a fake punt, but depending on an opponent's alignment, he could call one off by yelling, "Omaha, Omaha." Twice in his career, Jensen did run a fake, including a pass for a touchdown.

"I've learned a lot since then, so I do more—but not all that much more," Westhoff said. "We were pretty complex with Jim."

Jensen, of course, did not enter the NFL with the same combination of fanfare and curiosity that Tebow did. (Who has?) What he did have was a background that made him indispensableto Shula and Westhoff. At Central Bucks West High School in Doylestown, Pa.—his head coach was Mike Pettine Sr., the father of the Jets' defensive coordinator—Jensen played quarterback, tight end and safety. He was a low-level Division I recruit, pursued by the likes of Bucknell and Lehigh before settling on Boston University.

There, he started at quarterback for two seasons, orchestrating an option-style offense in which he would often pitch the football to a running back then sprint in front of him to act as the play's lead blocker. In a game against Louisville, BU's long-snapper left with an injury, and Jensen filled in. NCAA regulations require players at specific positions to wear uniform numbers within a certain range. So at the appropriate moments, one of Jensen's teammates would hand him a uniform shirt with a lineman's number, which he'd slip on over his quarterback jersey, making him eligible to snap. "After a couple of punts," he said, "Louisville knew what was going on."

The Dolphins' scouting report on Jensen, Shula said, consisted of Shula's watching a few reels of game film of him. They drafted Jensen in the 11th round in 1981 anyway, banking that his size (6-feet-4, 215 pounds) and versatility would help him find a place to play. As an earnest rookie, Jensen volunteered to run headfirst into the blocking wedge on kickoff returns, earning the nickname "Crash," and he was available as an emergency quarterback.

"Jim was a very unique guy," Shula said, "not necessarily as a passer or a pure quarterback, but an all-around athlete playing the position." A description that could as easily apply to Tebow.

But once Miami drafted Dan Marino in 1983, there was little debate over who would get more snaps under center. Jensen instead emerged into a full-time special-teams player and one of Marino's favorite targets as a wide receiver/running back/tight end, catching 119 passes over the 1988 and '89 seasons.

If the Jets were willing to invest the time, Marino said, they could ease Tebow into a role as diverse as Jensen's. "We didn't do the Wildcat—I would never allow them to do the Wildcat—but the similarities are there," he said. As they have been before each of their two previous games, the Jets were reluctant to reveal their plans for Tebow against the Dolphins, but this much is certain: Watching from his Florida home will be a man who, no matter what Tebow does or how often he does it, will be surprised by nothing.

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